Interview: Joe Maggio, Director of 'Bitter Feast'

Bitter Feast, the first horror film from indie director Joe Maggio and the latest from House of the Devil and I Sell the Dead production house Glass Eye Pix, has its world premiere tonight at the Los Angeles Film Festival. I've said it on the site already, but there's nothing wrong with repetition: If you can make the screening, I certainly recommend you do. But if for whatever you still don't trust my film recommendations (spoiler alert: I'm never wrong), perhaps our interview with Maggio should help provide you some incentive for this highly satisfying chef versus critic showdown.

Horror Squad: How did you first conceive of the idea for Bitter Feast?

Joe Maggio: Let me just say I'm a huge food guy. Becoming a chef was the first thing I wanted to do before going into film. I read mostly food magazines, I love shopping for food, eating, drinking, the whole deal. I read the New York Times' dining section pretty religiously and back in June of 2007 Gordon Ramsay was opening his first restaurant in NYC. It was a highly anticipated opening and Frank Bruni, who was the most influential food critic in the country at the time, wrote this review that was just awful.

Not that it was a negative review, it was just indifferent; this lazy kind of review. His big thing was that the restaurant just "lacks excitement". And I was like, What the f*ck? Do you know how hard it is to open a restaurant? Especially for a guy as high profile as Ramsay, the stakes are so high that if it fails it could be really damaging for his career. And that is what you call him on? Not the food, just this vague, intangible complaint.